How to Pick a Public Speech Topic?

A great speech topic depends on your audience. Get tips for analyzing your audience before speaking in this video clip from a professional public speaker, Tracy Goodwin.

Here is the transcript of the speech.

Ok. We have established that you’re giving a speech on a certain topic:  informative, persuasive, special occasion, so forth and so on. The first thing we have to look at is your audience. Who in the world are you speaking to?

Ok.  We’ve got to look at a lot of different areas about your audience that you might not have thought of. Because we have to pick a speech topic that’s going to be appropriate for who you’re speaking to as well as remember something worthwhile and something that they’re going to be interested in.

So let’s just look across the board at the demographics now. By demographics, I’m talking about things like age. Are you talking to 20 years old? Are you talking to 60 years old?  Because you and I both know you talk to them very differently okay.  What is the age for they are? Are they all 20? Are they all 60 or are you looking at a cross-section?

What’s the gender? Are you talking to women? Are you talking to men? Because trust me you’re gonna find out if you don’t already know you talk to them differently. Okay?  Do you need to look at anything like religious background, economic background, educational background and most importantly what do you have in common with these people.

What do you have that is similar and what do you have that’s different. Are you all college students? Great! Check that off. Ae you all working for the same company? Great. Check that off? Are you all in sales? Great. Check that off.  It’s important to take a look at all those demographics because you want to write your speech and pick your topic to make it interesting for that group of people.

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